


Acquaintance

by coraxes



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, barely an au really, i accidentally aged up gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 08:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7040902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night he sees Attolia dancing in the gardens, Eugenides asks to join her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquaintance

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, this could probably be a lot better/go longer but i wrote it at 3 AM so
> 
> hope u enjoy, comments/criticism always welcome
> 
> ALSO i didn't realize we actually knew gen's and attolia's ages, lmao. i've had a headcanon for a while that there are really just 3-4 years between them, and then the very next day i find out it's actually 7. so...au where gen was few a couple years earlier, too?

Irene doesn’t hear the boy arrive; one moment there is no one standing in the kitchen gardens but her, and then she twirls in a circle and he is right in front of her, standing between two orange trees. 

 

He is younger than her—eight or nine, perhaps—and dressed in dark clothing, streaked with soot and dirt.  She freezes; young as she is, she knows what an intruder looks like.  But—he _is_ just a boy.  Even the most desperate barons would have no reason to hire someone so young.

 

“Who are you?” she asks.  The freedom she felt, dancing by herself, is gone just as quickly as it came; she fights a blush at the thought that this boy saw her so _unguarded._

 

“Gen,” he says.  He looks around shiftily ( _searching for witnesses?_ Irene thinks, and looks around herself), and then he holds out his hand.  “Do you want me to dance with you?”

 

There are too many things Irene doesn’t know: who this boy is, where he comes from, why he is here, who his allies might be, if anyone.  And she is _angry,_ irrationally so, that he has disturbed her—that after hours of being surrounded by court, passed over in favor of her older brothers, she came out here for peace and instead had that peace disturbed.

 

Irene turns up her nose.  “No,” she says, “I don’t.  Go back to wherever you came from, or I’ll call the guards.”  And she turns around, back to the kitchens.  She looks for him one last time before she leaves, but he is gone.

 

Hours later, when she returns to her room, there is a new pair of earrings lying on her dresser.  Diamonds, square cut in a gold setting.  She puts them in a drawer and tries not to think of them.

 

\--

 

The next time she sees the boy, it is just after her brother’s funeral.

 

Irene reaches for the thin blade hidden in her bodice, but the boy holds his hands up.  He’s clean this time, dressed in an unobtrusive servants’ uniform; she wonders where he could have gotten it.  “I’m not here to hurt you,” he says immediately.  His voice is different; the accent has changed, from lower-class Attolian to upper-class, but this boy seems too dark to be any kind of Attolian.

 

“Then why _are_ you here?” she asks.  She has just ordered the room cleared—it took some persuasion, the attendants too set on either gaining her favor or spying on her to actually do as she says, but she prevailed in the end.  Irene has always had a forceful personality when she was able to show it.  “And how did you get here?  Who are you working for?” _Why must you only appear when I want to be alone?_

“I—”  The boy grimaces as inner conflict plays out on his face.  He wouldn’t last a moment, Irene thinks, in the Attolian court.  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.  About your brother.”

 

She does not believe him, not for a moment.  No one breaks into a castle to express their sympathies, least of all to _her._ “Get out,” she says.

 

“Did you like the earrings?” Gen asks.

 

“I never wore them,” she says.  “Get out.”

 

Gen takes a few steps back.  She will not turn from him this time; Irene wants to know how he got in here, so she can make sure it will not happen again.  Then, “It wasn’t an accident.  But you know that.”

 

Irene freezes.  “I know,” she says, very slowly.

 

“If you want,” says Gen, “I can tell you who did it.”

 

“I won’t believe you.”

 

“I can tell you where to find proof.”

 

Her brother was murdered, and she does not know who killed him.  When she is queen, she could use her power—her influence over her king, whoever that might be—to find the murderer and pay him in turn, but that is years from now, and her father will not act without damning evidence.

 

 _What does he want for this?_ What is the boy’s angle, what’s his game?  Is he an agent for the real killer, sent to mislead her?  Above all, _why is he here_?

 

She does not know the answers, or even where to start looking.  All she has is a name that might not be real and a face that looks more Eddisian than Attolian. 

 

But—he can tell her who her enemy is.  If she finds the evidence she needs, then—that’s good, isn’t it?  No matter what the source?  She is playing chess, and she cannot even see all the pieces. 

 

“Tell me,” Irene says, and Gen smiles.

 

\--

 

Irene directs her servants toward the proof, carefully enough that it seems like she was never involved at all.  It is in one of the barons’ own hand, and collaborators come forward; none of them speak of a boy named Gen.  There are three executions in the next week. 

 

The next set of earrings are sapphires, so deep blue they seem black.  They look like a matched set to the necklace she was wearing after the funeral, and there is a note under them. 

 

_Do you trust me now?_

The note is signed, _Eugenides._

 

(She doesn’t trust him, she can’t, but—gods, she wants to.  She wants to believe someone is on her side.)

 

\--

 

 _Eugenides._ It isn’t a common name, and there is only one person with it who would sneak around her castle—but what interest the boy Thief of Eddis would have in her, she can’t imagine.  Or—she can.  Eddis could benefit in many ways from having its eye on the next Attolia.  But none of the boy’s actions make sense in that light.  Why offer to dance with her, giving away that he was in the palace?  Why help her find who killed her brother?  Why tell her his name, knowing that she must find out who it belonged to?

 

She twists the earring he gave her absentmindedly when she’s alone.  There is a possible reason for his actions, but she would rather not dwell on it.  Calf love makes at once too much and too little sense.

 

His next appearance comes months later, when she has dismissed her attendants to walk alone in the queen’s gardens.  She turns a corner, and there he is, sitting lazily on a bench, legs crossed at the ankle and a coin dancing across his knuckles.  He looks like he has been waiting for her.  Irene closes her hands into fists.

 

“I’m surprised you have time to be here so often,” she says quietly.  Eugenides looks up at her; the coin keeps moving.  “Doesn’t Eddis need its thief?”

 

“My uncle who is Eddis does not need me that often,” says Eugenides.  There has never been a trace of Eddisian in his accent; she wonders what he would sound like with it.  A barbarian, her mind supplies.  “Besides, I like to think I’m helping him here.”

 

“And how are you doing that?”  Irene asks.  If he found out who killed her brother, there are a thousand other things he could find, all of which could benefit his country.

 

“If I manage to befriend the future queen of Attolia, Eddis will have an ally, won’t we?”  He grins at her.  It is infuriatingly charming; he has _dimples._

“Befriend?” Irene says, injecting as much scorn as she can into the word. 

 

“Friends help each other,” says Eugenides.  “And I think…”  His head tilts.  “I think you could use a few more people on your side.”

 

He is right, and she hates it—but she doesn’t know that he is on her side at all, whatever he says.  The Thieves are notoriously unpredictable. 

 

She does not say this.  The Thief might think he can win her to his side, but perhaps—perhaps she can make him an ally to her throne, instead.  If nothing else, he has proven useful.  Irene sits down beside him; Eugenides looks surprised, then pleased, then schools his face into neutrality.  _Calf love,_ she thinks.

 

“Do you like to read?” she asks.

 

(She knows he does.  Her fathers’ spies are surprisingly open to persuasion; she’ll have to replace them later.)

 

\--

 

Eugenides comes to the palace more frequently, appearing half a dozen times in the next few months, and she realizes—much to her discomfort—that she actually _looks forward_ to it. 

 

Discussion over reading turns into discussion about court.  Irene does not give away information that he could use; she doesn’t need to.  Eugenides knows all the gossip already, and more than once Irene has to bite back a laugh during state dinners because she remembers one of his funnier remarks. 

 

The first time she makes him laugh, he looks at her very seriously—for all there are still tears in his eyes—and says, “Good, you have a sense of humor.  I was beginning to wonder.”  Truth be told, Irene was beginning to forget she had one as well.

 

Then they speak of history, and that often turns into debate, which Irene enjoys almost as much as the rest.  It feels like ages since she was allowed to just _disagree_ with someone, without worrying about them declaring war on her father for it.  Eugenides is so irreverent that it makes her feel like she can be, too.

 

Still, it isn’t a surprise when he does not appear for the first few months that she is in her fiancé’s house.  Disappointing, but not surprising.  Irene supposes that he could not show himself in an unfamiliar environment, the way he did at the castle; who knows how long he had been exploring before he finally spoke to her?

Besides, she does not need him.  What she needs is to learn to gather information for herself.  So she does, listening, keeping her head down, ignoring slights and jabs that come her way; and if, on days when she feels like she might snap, she wears earrings of blue-black sapphires, then no one else notices.  She collects her coleus and waits.

 

Then her father dies.

 

Eugenides appears three days after she finds out the news, the night before she intends to return to the capital.  “How long have you been drying the coleus?” he asks her in lieu of greeting.  She hears no intent behind the question, just simple curiosity. 

 

She does not approach him; his timing, she thinks, is too convenient.  That he just _happens_ to appear after her father’s death, knowing what he knows, he could ruin _everything_ —

 

Irene wishes she had the luxury of trusting him, but she has been alone too long for that.

 

“What do you want?” she asks, the question he has never properly answered.

 

“If you want to take control of your kingdom, you will need allies.  Killing the baron’s son will not secure your place.”  Gen stands still as a statue beside her wardrobe.  He should not look as dangerous as he does—he is a half-grown boy, his voice barely changed.  But, somehow, he reminds her of a snake; perfectly relaxed until it strikes. 

 

Irene does not respond.  They both know she knows this.  She merely raises an eyebrow, waits for him to tell her the point.

 

“I could help you, if you wanted.  But I can’t help you secure the throne unless I know that it would also benefit Eddis.”

 

 _Ah,_ Irene thinks.  She wonders how long he’s been planning this, and whose idea it was.  Eddis himself, perhaps.  “And how would you know that?” she asks, keeping her voice coolly pleasant.  It is the same voice she uses with her fiancé. 

 

Eugenides looks her squarely in the eye, and his shoulders set into a stubborn line.  “Marry me,” he says.

 

He seems so sincere, so _sure_ of this— _ridiculous_ proposal—that she cannot even bring herself to laugh.  (It feels like ages since she laughed, and she is sure that it was with him.)  “You’re a half-grown boy,” is the first thing that jumps onto her tongue.

 

“You’re a half-grown girl,” he counters back.  “Do you really think I’m that much younger than you?”

 

“What would happen if we did marry?  Do you think my barons would accept a barbarian goatfoot as their king?  I hardly have to tell you how precarious my position will be,” and she should _not_ be telling him this—wouldn’t be, if she wasn’t sure he already knew. 

 

“It doesn’t have to be right away,” says Eugenides, but she’s hurt him; she can see that much in his eyes even if he tries to conceal it.  “You could never marry one of your own, anyway.”

 

“Oh?”

 

(She’s come to this conclusion before, herself; she wants to see what drew him to it.)

 

“They will be at each other’s throats.  You can’t afford to show one favor over the other, so unless you intend to marry all of your barons at once, you will need to marry a foreigner.”  He stares up at the ceiling now, seemingly unable to look her in the face anymore.  “As it happens, I am royalty, but not directly in line for the throne.  And I think that you could use a thief at your side.”

 

Those are all true.  But.  _But._

 

She doesn’t _know_ him, and she has a fiancé to kill and power to win; he can lay it out for her like that, calmly, but Irene cannot trust him and does not have the means to find out if he is lying.  Perhaps when she has her own spies, she can make more informed judgements. 

 

“There is also the small fact that I’m in love with you,” Eugenides offers, and now he’s staring at the floor. 

 

“Oh,” says Irene, because she had expected that he thought himself in love with her, but she had never expected him to say it.

 

“I know I’m hardly the only one—”

 

“I knew you were a liar, Eugenides, but I didn’t think you would lie about _that,_ ” says Irene. 

 

He makes a sound that is almost a laugh, but not quite, and shakes his head.  She is all too aware of the distance between them; he is on the other side of the room, on the other side of her bed.  It feels like she should be closer to him for something this personal, but she wants to run away at the same time—she can feel herself running hot and cold at once as though feverish. 

 

“I’m not lying.  I am in love with you, and so is half the court—I could give you a list of names, if you like.”  His jaw sets stubbornly. 

 

She doesn’t expect him to answer this truthfully, but— “Did Eddis send you?  Does he know what you are asking?”

 

Eugenides hesitates, which she has never known him to do; and for that, she believes him when he says, “No.  He…doesn’t even know I have been visiting Attolia.”

 

“Ah.”  Irene crosses the room, stops just in front of him, and lifts a hand to his cheek.  He is still as a marble statue.  _I don’t think I have ever had this much power in my life,_ she thinks, and the thought is—dizzying. 

 

Eugenides looks up at her, and Irene forces herself to examine what she sees in his face.  Hope.  Fear.  She does not see a lie.

 

“Eugenides.  Gen.”  She taps a finger on his cheekbone.  “No.”

 

He swallows.

 

“I am going to choose my own allies.  I will kill the men who murdered my father, and I will take control of my kingdom.  I will do it without your help and without your hand.”  She says it calmly, an order: _this is how the world is going to be.  This is what I am going to make it._

He leans into her touch, just a little.  “You know, I think you will.”

 

She nods briefly, and then kisses him just as briefly—her first, feather-light, and Eugenides tenses up all at once. 

 

“Go, Eugenides,” she says.  “And thank you.”


End file.
